Food sufficiency, environment conservation, local autonomy, social equity—these are urgent, bedrock concerns today. These challenges are addressed by governments, development agencies, multilateral organizations, and other institutions, but we have also seen that the most meaningful, impactful actions often come from the ground, from local communities and the people themselves.

An inspiring example is the story of fifty-one-year-old Eugenio Lemos of Timor-Leste. Lemos lived through the turbulent years of his country’s struggle for independence, that saw the Indonesian invasion and the bitter civil war that marked the country’s emergence as a fully independent nation in 2002. Such difficult beginnings devastated the economy, leaving 40% of the country’s mostly rural population living below the poverty line. For Lemos, born to a family of farmers, it was a tragic time as well. He lost his father and siblings during the war and had to help his mother in farm work at an early age. It would be his life.

He studied agriculture in a local university and took up such activities as starting a group to promote organic farming. In 1999, an Australian permaculture trainer, who was in Timor-Leste to train farmers in sustainable agriculture, introduced Lemos to permaculture, a holistic system for creating and managing sustainable agrosystems. It was not simply about transferring technologies but the cultivation of an ethos of responsible relations to nature and people, expressed in the words “earth care, people care, and fair share.” Lemos saw that many elements of this system were already present in traditional Timorese culture and he resolved that this was something he would devote himself to promoting among his people.

In 2001, Lemos established Permakultura Timor-Lorosa’e (Permatil). It has three main programs. A Youth Training Program that organizes three-day camps for youth seventeen years old or older, involving learning-and-fun activities in water and natural resource management, farming, aquaculture, and agroforestry. (Another camp for kids twelve to sixteen was later added, with simpler activities like gardening and preparing organic food.)

A School Garden Program implemented in public primary schools in which students tend vegetable gardens and learn composting, natural pest control, seed selection, and other skills. There is also a Water and Natural Resource Management Program that promotes “rainwater harvesting” by building ponds, swales, and terraces that store water, recharge aquifers, and regenerate springs.

Since 2008, the youth camp has trained more than 5,000 youth across the country. The School Garden  Program  has  been  established  in  more  than  250 schools and, since 2015, has been integrated in the national  public  school  curriculum.  Permatil’s  Water  and  Natural  Resource Management Program has been introduced in all thirteen administrative districts of Timor-Leste. More than 1,000 water collection ponds have been built and 300 springs revived, benefitting over 400,000 residents or almost a third of the country’s population.

Charismatic, Lemos works with people from all walks of life—they are drawn by his open, humble, down-to-earth manner. Very much in character, he is an activist, a song writer and a singer who uses his songs as a medium to communicate the social issues he cares about. More than just about methods and techniques, Lemos promotes a whole way of looking at nature and people, particularly among the young. Taking time off for a scholarship in 2008-2010, Lemos earned a master’s degree in community development in Australia. What defines him today is that he is proud and respectful of his culture, grounded in local realities, and draws deeply from traditional knowledge what he finds essential to living. He insists, for instance, that what is needed is not simply “food security” or access to food (often commercial and imported) but “food sovereignty,” the country’s capacity to produce its own food, placing the premium on what is local, natural, and nutritious. Still, Lemos is mindful that what he is doing has lessons beyond Timor-Leste. He says, “My message to people—especially leaders of every country—is, think wisely. Don’t think only of how to create benefits for business without thinking about the impact on the environment. As world citizens, everything we do has an impact on others. We have one atmosphere, one water, one air.”

In electing Eugenio Lemos to receive the 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his indomitable spirit in uplifting the lives of local communities, his vision and passion in integrating local and indigenous cultures in his advocacy for the care of the environment and the well-being of people; and for being truly a man of and for his people, and thus for the world as well.

First of all, I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for electing me to receive Asia’s premier prize and highest honor, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

As we all know, man’s impact on our Mother Earth is at a critical crossroads, with many factors severely damaging our natural resources – our agricultural and terrestrial lands, and our marine and aquatic resources. Because of this, the food sovereignty of every country is currently under threat.

For many generations, humans have plundered Mother Earth’s resources in the name of capitalism, and in doing so we have robbed future generations – our own children and children’s children – of water security, of food sovereignty and of a life free of climate change.

The future that they face – a life filled with uncertainty, dangers, threats of displacement and extreme weather events is something I feel extremely concerned about. It is something that we all should be concerned about.

With today’s geopolitics of the current wars between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Palestine worsening the global food production and availability, many millions of people will go hungry and suffer from lack of access to quality, nutritious food and clean drinking water.

But through environmental advocacy, skills training and awareness-raising of ecosystem literacy, permaculture and traditional knowledge, we can build new generations of citizens who have the understanding, capacity, and confidence to effectively tackle climate change and its effects.

Young people of the world are key to achieving sustainable development and restoring the long-term viability of our environment across the globe. It is essential that all young people receive equal access to quality education and training, to social justice and quality health services, to protection from violence and abuse and to opportunities for employment and meaningful participation in society.

So, I ask all of us to make a commitment, to join forces and to act together in stopping the causes of climate change and ecosystem destruction. The time to mobilize everyone especially the youth of the world to rise above the environmental challenges ahead is now.

Permatil (Timor-Leste) and Permatil Global are committed to engaging all youths in the practice of permaculture through the PermaYouth in Action movement. This will grow new environmental leaders and equip youth to share the knowledge and skills with their communities. Knowledge and skills to rehabilitate environments, become water, seed, land and food resilient and implement climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The impact we can create together will not only restore local environments and offer sustainable local livelihoods but will multiply and spread far and wide – increasing the wellbeing of our communities, entire countries, and our planet, now and into the future.

The change begins with all of us. The time to do so is now.

Permaculture. Everyone. Everywhere.

Obrigado barak!

For Timor Leste, centuries of colonial rule and decades of bitter civil strife have killed a third of the country’s population in its struggle to be a free and independent nation. It remains a fragile state, burdened by political dissension, violence, a weak economy, and widespread poverty.  This is a situation in which the work of civil society and ordinary citizens is urgent and invaluable.

MARIA DE LOURDES MARTINS CRUZ, widely known as MANA LOU,was born one of seven children of a well-to-do coffee planter in Liquica, Timor Leste.  Displaying an affinity for religious work as a child, she studied at a Jesuit institute in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where she was exposed to the liberation theology of Gustavo Gutierrez and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire.  She then joined the Canossian Sisters congregation, but left before taking her final vows when she discerned that her personal vocation lay outside the convent walls.

In 1989, she founded Instituto Seculare Maun Alin Iha Kristu (ISMAIK), or Secular Institute of Brothers and Sisters in Christ, a lay institute of men and women dedicated to uplifting the poorest of the poor through projects in health care, education, farming, animal husbandry, and other self-help initiatives. MANA LOU carried out her work in the midst of Timor Leste’s tumultuous transition to independence in 2002,  when the Indonesian army occupied the country and fierce fighting broke out between pro-Indonesia and pro-independence Timorese militias.  Boldly crossing battle lines, she talked to Indonesian soldiers, warring militias, and refugees, spreading, by force of her spirit of solidarity, a gospel of love and peace.  She built a refuge in her father’s coffee estate in Dare, in the hills above Dili; in time this refuge would include a school for girls, orphanages, a home for the sick, and a place where people of opposing faiths and politics could find safety and peace.

From this beginning, ISMAIK has expanded to more than ten such houses across the country.  Called “schools of life” and led by ISMAIK members and volunteers, these houses serve, according to need, as centers for moral and spiritual formation, skills and livelihood training, care centers for tuberculosis patients and children with disabilities, and hubs for community participation.  In partnership with an American doctor, MANA LOU also established Bairo-Ata Clinic, a large, free clinic for the poor that averages 300 patients daily and is the nation’s largest provider of tuberculosis treatment.

Typically, however, ISMAIK’s initiatives are small-scale, needs-based, person-to-person, and practical.  They put the premium on values of self-reliance, the use of locally available resources such as the promotion of herbal medicine and food gardens, mutual help in projects such like labor-pooling for house construction,  and moral and spiritual formation.  MANA LOU says, “We see that Jesus was very simple.  He was impassioned, always ready to do something, ready to act.” “Hence,” she says, “people should take control: if a road needs fixing, we fix it; if someone needs help in farm work, we help.”

Transcending the ethnic, religious, and political divisions in Timorese society, MANA LOU is animated not only by her faith, but also by her love for her people and her conviction that building independent, productive, and ethical persons is fundamental in her country, where a sense of national identity and civic consciousness are as yet undeveloped. “Ours is a new nation,” she says. “It will need people to have a heart big enough to love and bodies prepared to do hard work.”

In electing MARIA DE LOURDES MARTINS CRUZ to receive the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her pure humanitarianism in uplifting Timor Leste’s poor, her courageous pursuit of social justice and peace, and her nurturing the development of autonomous, self-reliant, caring citizens, so vital in new, post-conflict nations in the world.

Greetings of peace, solidarity and fraternity to all! My honour and gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting me to receive this award. I thank you, President Abella, and your team for your support. I was full of dreams growing up in a small village, blessed by family and nature in a coffee plantation. All those dreams were destroyed by war; war kills people in ways worse than animals. I started to revolt when I became a victim. But God led me to a different path.

During my retreat, I asked Him what should I do? In the stillness of Jesus’ suffering image, I heard a voice say: Why do you search for Me in the convent? You see, I suffered a lot in a remote area with poor, disadvantaged, illiterate and suffering people. They don’t have any support. I really need your help! This is the real secret of my life’s vocation.

Returning to East Timor after my studies, I was motivated to work, physically and spiritually, to establish IS-MAIK to serve the poor, even if I began with no funds.

It is not easy to find volunteers to solve social problems in rural areas. So we established branches with like-minded groups, places to empower poor and disadvantaged people like the youth, teach them the realities of life and educate them. We started schools for life, where people learn in a practical way and live with nature; in the process, they developed beliefs that made them work together to transform society. It is like building a house carefully one brick at a time.

We listen to poor people’s voices in times of difficulty and conflict. A genuine concern for the poor and marginalized motivated members and the IS-MAIK family, in a chaotic situation, to be unafraid to take risks, organize teams to bring people to safety and peace. We worked with the police, military and militias, and the international community so that they show respect for human rights. With support from civil and military authorities, IS-MAIK cared for refugees or displaced people to feel safe and respect life. We fed them, gave medical assistance to those in need and protection to those in danger or were “suspects”. We listened to those who experienced violence, helped them settle down with prayers and reflection. This is the work IS-MAIK had done, especially before the 1999 referendum.

With Dr. Daniel Murphy, IS-MAIK established Bairo Pite clinic in September 1999. We treat people using herbal and natural medicine until help from the international community and emergency teams arrive. This was the first clinic to respond to all emergency situations after the conflict, with the dedication and hard work of Dr. Dan and his staff. IS-MAIK intends to continue the clinic’s work, help people with tuberculosis, and children and mothers who lack nutrition. This IS-MAIK offers to the nation as part of its contribution to build a caring society.

I could not have done all the work and mission without the support of all my brothers and sisters. I cannot mention everyone by name—all your names are written in my heart, and I carry you on my shoulders. Our work and mission is not yet finished; there is still plenty to do, I continue to count on you all, so please come and help! God blessed you all.

East Timor, or Timor Lorosae, is Asia’s newest nation. For hundreds of years it was a Portuguese colony, a sleeping backwater of Portugals long-sleeping empire. But the East Timorese awoke to a new invader in 1975: Indonesia. Their armed resistance led to brutal reprisals and for nearly a quarter of a century the people of East Timor suffered under the hard hand of the Indonesian armed forces. Some 200,000 of them perished. 

ANICETO GUTERRES LOPES was eight years old when Indonesia seized his homeland. Coming of age amid the unwelcome occupation, he became a resister and, in 1985, took up the study of law at Udayana University in Bali, Indonesia. There he learned that Indonesian law actually upheld certain basic rights that were being routinely denied in East Timor. And he met Indonesian lawyers and activists who stood up for these rights despite their own country’s repressive dictatorship. They became his mentors and allies. 

When ANICETO subsequently launched his law practice in East Timor, his clients told him their stories. My husband was taken by soldiers two years ago. My son has been jailed and tortured. Armed men have raped our daughter. ANICETO did what little he could, given the unchecked power of the occupiers. Meanwhile, he recorded every story and worked quietly with others to prepare a different future for East Timor. 

In 1996, ANICETO founded Yayasan HAK, or Human Rights and Justice Foundation, to provide free legal services to human rights victims. As director and, for a time, the group’s only lawyer, he defended prominent political prisoners and ordinary Timorese alike. His foundation methodically documented massacres, extrajudicial killings, tortures, rapes, and arbitrary arrests, 339 cases in its first year alone, and became the single authoritative source about such abuses in East Timor. ANICETO announced these findings publicly and, through vernacular newspapers and radio, educated the people about their rights under Indonesian and international law. Few dared to speak so openly. He learned to live with harassment and threats. 

When, in 1999, a new government in Jakarta offered East Timor the option of independence through a popular referendum, the Indonesian military recruited East Timorese militia bands to intimidate pro-independence voters. As they launched a reign of terror, Aniceto organized election monitors. In the September polls, 78 percent of the voters chose independence. The militias killed and injured thousands of people in revenge and destroyed homes and buildings everywhere, including Aniceto?s own house and foundation headquarters. 

As East Timor prepared for independence under the transitional authority of the United Nations, ANICETO pondered his country’s inadequate judicial system. How could it possibly cope with all the unspeakable things that had happened? With others, he proposed a truth commission for East Timor. When the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation was formally established in 2002, ANICETO was chosen unanimously to lead it. 

ANICETO’s commission seeks both to uncover the ugly truths of the past and to confront them. Today, as commission teams investigate past political crimes, former victims and perpetrators are facing each other in grassroots reconciliation meetings throughout the country. Communities themselves are meting out penance to remorseful militia men and to perpetrators of assault, vandalism, and other “small crimes.” In East Timor, however, murderers, rapists, and torturers must still face the courts. 

Soft-spoken ANICETO, now thirty-six, is often exhausted. It is not just the never-ending work. It is the pressure to change East Timor’s culture of violence and retribution, a lingering impact of trauma and war. This weighs heavily on the new nation. “We need to recognize this heaviness in our past,” ANICETO says, “and deal with it together.”

In electing ANICETO GUTERRES LOPES to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his courageous stand for justice and the rule of law during East Timor’s turbulent passage to nationhood.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen. 

Allow me to express my happiness in taking part in this event, something that I could never have imagined in the past. I stand before this honorable forum to accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award, as the first East Timorese to receive this Award in the history of this esteemed Foundation. 

First of all, from the bottom of my heart, I wish to thank those who, through a careful and deliberate process, have selected me for this year’s Award in the category of Emergent Leadership. Your decision has not only brought me to this event, but has given me further responsibility to remain committed to the struggle of justice, freedom, democracy and the rule of law in East Timor and the rest of the world. 

I wish to extend my gratitude to the people of Timor-Leste, especially those who suffered from injustice and human rights violations during the long years of political conflict, and those with whom I struggled in our collective quest for freedom. They have given me inspiration and motivation; they have strengthened my commitment and made me worthy to receive this Award. It is to them that I dedicate this Award. 

My special thanks to my family and friends from the Hak Foundation, without whom I would not be here today, and the Commissioners and staff of the Commisssion for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. I wish also to thank all the international activists whose belief in our cause never wavered, even during the darkest hours, and the Indonesian human rights community whose courage continues to be an inspiration. 

This Award gives recognition to all the people of East Timor, who have only recently breathed the air of freedom. We are facing many challenges in building a new nation. We are learning how to guide ourselves from our dark past into a more democratic and just future. My work during our struggle, the transition and now in our independence, has served to crystallise and confirm my strongest belief. It is my conviction that there can be no way forward to peace and prosperity without a firm foundation of justice, human rights and the rule of law which relates equally to all people. 

It is this foundation which provides security for people to live their daily lives without fear; it is a necessary factor if we are to achieve reconciliation and leave violence behind as a historical lesson to remember, but never to repeat. It is the base which will give certainty to our economic and social development. This foundation is, I believe, the key to our future. In East Timor, one of the initiatives we are now building is the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. The Commission is a bridge from the past to our future. 

Through the work of the Commission, we have collected statements from thousands of ordinary East Timorese, many whom live in the remote mountains, who have personal stories of suffering abuse and violations. We have witnessed the greatness of their spirit during village reconciliation meetings when victims meet and reconcile with people who have harmed them and their communities in the past. We have learned from their resilience, their spirit of forgiveness, and their unrelenting thirst for justice. 

The road ahead of us is still long and difficult. The struggle to uphold the rule of law and human rights principles continues to be relevant, not only in East Timor, but increasingly in a world where might makes right, and where human rights are often only for the strong. It is the leadership of such a world that today’s youth will inherit. In stepping into the shoes of today’s leaders, we need most of all to be courageous and remain constant to our principles. For me, these principles remain firmly anchored in human rights, justice and the rule of law. 

In Timor-Leste we have learned painful lessons from our past: that unrestrained brute force creates not peace but further conflict; and that where human rights are not protected, there will be lasting violence — not lasting peace. This is an experience that is shared by far too many countries around the globe, and yet somehow, it is often forgotten. Let us constantly be reminded of these lessons from the past, and embrace them as the basis for our future. 

I am truly honored by the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership. 

Thank you.